“When the brakes fail, the change is instant and you have no choice but to try to think of options for action. But with gradual change, like ageing, you don't really notice it until something forces you to.”

In his HCL Comnet days, Vineet Nayyar used to run a boot camp for his new recruits in a far-off place. For a week, the cadets went through hell, doing team tasks in high pressure situations, mostly in a sleepless zombie-like state.

Within a month of being hired by HCL Technologies, Vineet Nayar, who later rose to become the company's CEO, was asked to leave. For Nayar, there were two major takeaways from it — a company is not always right, and neither is the individual. As for his management thought on the event — there is a need to search for a thought-in-between.